Here's his great example explaining how crucial elements work in a Steadfast story when Outcome is Failure:

(In this example Abby is the MC with a Crucial Element of Feeling; Jack is the IC.)Rather, [Abby] singles out the lack of feelings or deficient feelings that Jack and the others need to find within themselves. That shift, while clearing the way for the possibility of the townspeople to finally acquire some control over their lives, simply isn't enough to overcome their addiction to being loose and fancy free. Remember, our story ends in Failure. Abby's prodding works as intended in terms of freeing up Jack's emotional growth, yet it isn't enough to overcome the story's larger problem.

So basically, one way of showing the Crucial Element in a Steadfast Failure story is that it was there and did some work to pave the way for the OS Solution, but wasn't quite powerful enough or focused properly on the right spot.

One thing I've learned about Dramatica since creating that thread is that although it seems rigid, Dramatica really offers the writer immense freedom within the bounds of the story's structure / storyform. So the theory tells you that there is a crucial element, and gives certain guidelines, but doesn't tell you exactly how to use it. That's a good thing because within those bounds you are free to make it work however it works best in your story. (That's true for every single story point, not just Crucial Elements.)

So the answer to my original Question 2 is really just something like "whatever works best for your story"!

Note that Jim's story is Steadfast-Start, so you can see in his example how Abby tries to "fill a hole" by pointing out everyone's lack of feelings. Meanwhile, my MC is Steadfast-Stop, and I can see how Hinder (my MC Crucial Element) needs to be pointed out as a problem in the OS, and then moved or focused on something else (basically, Hindering the badguys' evil plans), but that doesn't quite happen. So I think Armando's original explanations are spot-on.

If anyone's interested in how I now see the Crucial Elements working in my story, let me know and I can try to write them as examples -- it all seems pretty clear to me now! (Mostly thanks to understanding my OS much better now, with Jim's help.)

I'd ask you to go ahead and give your example from your story, but I haven't thought much about the crucial element to this point. I think i'm going to have to reread Jim's article a couple times, and maybe look up some older articles as well to get a better idea of what all it's about before I start trying to incorporate it into the story i'm currently working on.

Cool. I would say, definitely leave it toward the end, once you can see how all the other story points are working and once you can see how your MC and IC represent different perspectives on a "truth juxtaposition" (mentioned in Jim's recent article).

Thanks @jhull, I found one of those today. I can't wait to read through all of them. My current project is a Changed/Success story, so the crucial element "makes sense" as you say in this article. So I've been taking your older advice and letting it play itself out. But I'm putting this on the list of things to figure out during the next project!

In a steadfast/stop story, does the MC point out the MCCE in the IC? Even if it is a failure/bad?

The reason I ask is because I noticed that the Moana & Hacksaw Ridge examples also had the MCCE & ICCE as RS symptom & response, respectively. Is that coincidence, and I'm reading into it?

When I looked up failure/bad examples on the dramatica filter site (because one of my amateur stories is failure/bad & steadfast/stop), I noticed that the MCCE & ICCE are not also the RS symptom & response. Instead, the RS symptom & response were also the MC's problem & solution in the examples I saw.

In short, in a failure/bad, would you write the MC pointing out the MCCE (i.e. process) in the IC or the MC pointing out the RS symptom (i.e. unproven) in the IC? Both of them make character sense to me since the MC is skeptical (unproven) & easily irritated with just about every process but his own (process).